The Kiss of Deception (The Remnant Chronicles, #1)(7)

I watched her as she absently stared into the fire, adding kindling as needed. Pauline was resourceful, but I knew she wasn’t fearless, and that made her courage today far greater than mine. She had everything to lose by what we had done. I had everything to gain.

“I’m sorry, Pauline. What a tangle I’ve made for you.”

She shrugged. “I was going to leave anyway. I told you.”

“But not like this. You could have left under far more favorable circumstances.”

She grinned, unable to disagree. “Maybe.” Her grin slowly faded, her eyes searching my face. “But I never could have left for as important a reason. We can’t always wait for the perfect timing.”

I didn’t deserve a friend like her. I ached with the compassion she had shown me. “We’ll be hunted,” I told her. “There will be a bounty on my head.” This was something we hadn’t talked about in the wee hours of the morning.

She looked away and shook her head vigorously. “No, not from your own father.”

I sighed, hugging my shins closer and staring at the glowing embers near my feet. “Especially from my father. I’ve committed an act of treason, the same as if a soldier of his army had deserted. And worse, I’ve humiliated him. I’ve made him look weak. His cabinet won’t let him forget that. He’ll have to act.”

She couldn’t disagree with this either. From the time I was twelve, as a member of the royal court, I’d been required to attend and witness the executions of traitors. It was a rare occurrence, since public hangings proved an effective deterrent, but we both knew the story of my father’s own sister. She had died before I was born when she threw herself from the East Tower. Her son had deserted his regiment, and she knew that even the king’s nephew wouldn’t be spared. He wasn’t. He was hung the next day, and they were both buried in disgrace in the same unmarked grave. Some lines couldn’t be crossed in Morrighan. Loyalty was one of them.

Pauline frowned. “But you’re not a soldier, Lia. You’re his daughter. You had no choice, and that meant I had no choice. No one should be forced to marry someone they don’t love.” She lay back, gazing up at the stars and wrinkling her nose. “Especially not some old stuffy, puffy prince.”

We broke into giggles again, and more than the air I breathed, I was thankful for Pauline. We watched the twinkling constellations together, and she told me about Mikael, the promises they’d made to each other, the sweet things he whispered in her ear, and the plans they’d made for when he returned from his last patrol with the Royal Guard at the end of this month. I saw the love in her eyes and the change in her voice when she spoke of him.

She told me how much she missed him but said she was confident he would find her because he knew her like no one else in the world knew her. They had talked of Terravin for countless hours—of the life they’d build there and the children they’d raise. The more she talked, the more the ache within me grew. I had only vague, empty thoughts of the future, mostly of what I didn’t want, while Pauline had fashioned dreams with real people and real details. She had created a future with someone else.

I wondered what it would be like to have someone who knew me so well, someone who would look right into my soul, someone whose very touch sent all other thoughts from my mind. I tried to imagine someone who hungered for the same things I did and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, and not because it fulfilled a loveless agreement on paper.

Pauline squeezed my hand and sat up, adding more wood to the fire. “We should get some sleep so we can make an early start.”

She was right. We had at least a week’s ride ahead of us, assuming we didn’t get lost. Pauline hadn’t been to Terravin since she was a child and wasn’t sure of the way, and I had never been there at all, so we could only follow her instincts and rely on the help of passing strangers. I spread a blanket on the ground for us to sleep on and brushed the needles of the forest floor from my hair.

She glanced at me hesitantly. “Do you mind if I say the holy remembrances first? I’ll say them softly.”

“Of course you should,” I whispered, trying to display a modicum of respect for her sake and feeling a twinge of guilt that I wasn’t compelled to say them myself. Pauline was faithful, while I hadn’t made a secret of my disdain for the traditions that had dictated my future.

She knelt, saying the holy remembrances, her voice hypnotic, like the soft chords of the harp that echoed throughout the abbey. I watched her, thinking how foolish fate was. She’d have made a far better First Daughter of Morrighan, the daughter my parents would have wanted, quiet and discreet of tongue, patient, loyal to the ways of old, pure of heart, perceptive to the unsaid, closer to having a gift than I would ever be, perfect for a First Daughter in all ways.

I lay back and listened to the story she chanted, the story of the original First Daughter using the gift the gods gave her to lead the chosen Remnant away from the devastation to safety and a new land, leaving behind a ravaged world and building a new, hopeful one. In her sweet lilt, the story was beautiful, redemptive, compelling, and I became lost in its rhythm, lost in the depth of the woods surrounding us, lost in the world that lay beyond, lost in the magic of a time gone by. In her tender notes, the story reached all the way to the beginning of the universe and back again. I could almost make sense of it.